Doomsday?
by sugaredkiwi
Summary: Set postDMC2, featuring Dante, Trish, and Vergil. On the date 060606, Trish and Dante make their way home from the bar, and find Vergil lurking in a closet. Vergil, after years in Hell, has lost his mind. Hijinks ensue.


**Author's Notes:** Felt like I should clarify a few things here, so here it is. This was written...Well, summer of last year, in response to the date 06/06/06, because it would have been wrong to let it go by and not write _anything_ for DMC. Features a post-DMC2 set of Dante and Trish, plus one very...Out of it Vergil. You know, years in Hell have finally just knocked him off of his rocker altogether, and he's degenerated in a shambling mess of paranoia and childish impulses. Thus, this.

* * *

It was supposed to be the end. Well, according to everyone who bothered to chatter about it in the small, badly lit, and dingy bar. In less than an hour, they said, the world was supposed to end. Dante and Trish had snorted at that, finding it inwardly hysterical. Idiots didn't know what they were talking about. They themselves had been a little paranoid a few months previously, on a completely different date, until nothing had happened, and they'd both shrugged it off, and hadn't, honestly, given the current date the slightest bit of thought.

In fact, Dante hadn't remembered it at all, until he'd been writing a check for the phone bill, and had had to ask Trish what it was. Hell, with the way one day blended into the next, it hadn't been all that surprising how it had just slipped his mind, anyway.

They'd laughed it off, and a quarter before Doomsday had left the bar, shaking their heads, ready to just get home to the shop. And check up on the elder of them all who, admittedly, was...Well. Dante nor Trish tended to mention his condition unless he was being overbearingly obnoxious, and then it was usually something like, "Would you get the goddamn loony and lock him somewhere?" Usually from Dante, no less, who'd grown to have little patience, even for him. Trish wondered about that, but kept her thoughts to herself for the most part, just because the idea of cleaning up spearing him to the wall for that mouth didn't appeal to her.

But it didn't matter. He was there, and he was helpless, and they were stuck with him, whether they liked it or not. Trish didn't mind so much, to be honest. In his good moments, he was wonderful, and in the bad...Well, she could forgive him for it. He wasn't...He wasn't all there, and so really none of it was his fault. It was a bed of his own making, she'd learned, but he was lying in it, and seemed to be oblivious to most everything to begin with. It took so very little to make him happy, really.

And then there was Dante. Trish cut him a look from the corner of her eye, inwardly shaking her head. He was so grouchy about it all, and while she could understand, she also thought that he could be a bit more understanding, as well. After all, he was pattered after like a puppy around the shop, and that? Was divine retribution. She was sure the other would agree, were he in his right mind and in possession of himself. Karma had truly come to bite Dante in the ass, and yes, he was wibbling about it like the big baby he was.

But even she felt a prick of uneasiness as they approached the shop, where it stood pitch black and silent, tucked away between two larger buildings. As far as she could remember, they'd left the lights on, including the sign above the front door, which was usually a garish, neon red that buzzed noisily in the night but now...Now it was all quiet and dark, and she and Dante exchanged a look, before he started forward, purposely moving into her path to force her behind him.

No matter what he said, she figured, there was something left of the sweet, if brash boy she'd once heard about.

But that didn't matter, as she moved to follow him up the steps. He was tense, the line of his shoulders said so, proving that, no, they very well hadn't left the shop like that a few hours ago. And here she'd been worried her memory was getting faulty. So much for that. It just amplified the apprehension she felt, as he moved to shoulder the door open, guns already swinging to his front.

Only to be greeted by silence. Not a thing was stirring in the place, that she could see, hear, smell, or feel. And she knew what he was thinking, and knew what he wouldn't say aloud, so she did so herself. "You don't think they finally caught up to him, do you?"

"...I don't know." The hesitation said he very well did think they had. A person didn't live with someone for years and not figure out something of their habits and thought patterns, after all. When he lowered his mismatched guns and started across the floor, she only bit her lip lightly, and started in herself, halting when a scratching came from the closet next to the downstairs bathroom.

Dante had done the same, head cocked to the side like a dog (Fitting, she thought.). "He better not have..." he muttered to himself, before clopping along to the door, Trish almost stepping on his heels the whole time. Well, she didn't want anything to have happened to her poor 'pet', as Dante now referred to him, since he followed her around just as much as Dante, now that he trusted her. She didn't. He was sweet enough most of the time. Like a kid, really, even if Dante said he gave him the creeps. Trish couldn't see it.

Until the closet door was thrown open, and they were greeted with a pair of red, glowing eyes in the otherwise pitch black gloom, along with a hiss. There wasn't a moment of hesitation as Ivory was raised, and Trish didn't doubt the sight was right between the two eyes, which she had to admit...Yeah, that was kind of creepy. She groped at the wall a moment, before finding the lightswitch, and soon the place was dimly lit enough to see what was inside the closet, which earned a snort from Dante.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Didn't you know?" The eyes widened, unnaturally so, slightly hollowing at the same time. "It's coming." A shifty glance was thrown around, and he skittered forward, grabbing Dante by the lapels of his jacket, giving him a shake, as though there wasn't a gun barrel still pressed against his forehead. "The horsemen are riding, and now we'll all go to _Hell_."

Dante simply stared a long moment, before moving Ivory slowly away, popping his lips. "Yuh-huh." His free hand detached the too-thin ones clutching at his jacket, before giving a light shove to the other's breast bone, sending him back into the closet. "Well, why don't you just stay in there so you'll leave us the he- I mean, be safe."

"Dante!" Trish couldn't believe he'd said that. Well, until she actually looked in the closet and saw what had been stockpiled there. Was that her black dress? And the _beer_? And, of course, the ever-present tabloids. Which were being rummaged through, the other still oblivious to the rough treatment from his twin brother. Yes...Yes, that sad shell was none other than the elder twin son of Sparda, Vergil, after years and years of torture and brainwashing, his mind finally having fully snapped.

"See? _See_?!" One, the most recent copy of Weekly World News, was held out and shaken in Dante's face, a bit frantically. And when Dante didn't take it immediately, it was only shaken harder, as Vergil made a noise, halfway between a whimper and a growl, in the back of his throat.

With an exasperated sigh, Dante snatched it away and scanned the cover for a long moment, silently, before a loud snicker escaped him, and he gave Vergil an incredulous look. "You're fucking kidding me. Where'd your brains go, Vergil? Don't you know it ain't six-six-six we gotta worry about?" At Vergil's blank stare, he shook his head and gave the stupid thing back, rolling his eyes. "Dear fucking _Lord_."

"It's _true_," Vergil hissed, eyes deepening in color. "It's true and the doubters will be the first to go" It was said in a somewhat sing-song voice, which, to Trish, only added to the creepy factor.

"...Vergil? Are you wearing a tinfoil hat?"

"_It's not a tinfoil hat_. It keeps them from hearing my _thoughts_."

"Uh huh." Dante took a step back, one eyebrow twitching. "Well, I'm sure even if 'they'-" And yes, he made quotation marks with his fingers - "Could hear you, you'd be safe." And with that, he reached over and flipped off the lights, very much intending to just...Go to bed.

That was when the skittering started. And they knew it was Vergil by following the trail of the red eyes; through the office, into the kitchen. In the kitchen it disappeared, but soon enough, there was banging in the air vents, and two sets of wide blue eyes followed the racket, to where it stopped, in the approximate place of Dante's bedroom.

For several long, uncomfortable moments, nothing was said. Instead, both simply stared in horror at that spot, Dante with his mouth hanging open slightly. That? That had been creepy. Hell, it still _was_ creepy. And he jumped, when Trish patted him on the shoulder.

"He took the beer."

"...I saw that."

"Sleep with one eye open."


End file.
